20,000 miracles under this sea

REVIEW: Grimm’s Tales For Young and Old by Chichester Festival Youth Theatre

EVERYWHERE you look is a new miracle, says a character in the Nuffield’s home-grown adaptation of Jules Verne’s prophetic classic. And isn’t that the truth?

Lighting designer Mark Dymock creates the beneath-the-waves world of the submarine - long before submarines were invented – with techniquesthat capture the senses of both beauty and imprisonment with wondrously varied colours.

The production has elements of the classic Nuffield Christmas shows, with madcap fun, awful jokes, and anarchic conduct by one diminutive female character.

Adapter and director Russ Tunney judges that to a nicety, as he does the use of former Chief Scout Peter Duncan as the harpoon king to show rather more than normal Scouting skills – notably in one slick piece of illusion.

But the key performer is Granville Saxton as Captain Nemo of the Nautilus. The song that illumines his past and present is delivered with compelling emotion.